8 Things You Didn’t Know About Your Penis

Sensitivity, pleasure, size, and other surprising facts.

1. Use It or Lose It

You need to have erections regularly to keep your penis in shape. “It has to be essentially exercised,” says Tobias Kohler, MD, assistant professor of urology at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine.

To maintain a healthy tone, the smooth muscle of the penis must be periodically enriched with oxygen by the rush of blood that engorges the penis and makes it erect, Kohler says.

2. Your Penis May Be a ‘Grower’ or a ‘Show-er’

Among men, there is no consistent relationship between the size of the flaccid penis and its full erect length.

In one study of 80 men, researchers found that increases from flaccid to erect lengths ranged widely, from less than a quarter-inch to 3.5 inches longer.

Whatever the clinical significance of these data may be, the locker-room significance is considerable. You can’t assume that a dude with a big, limp penis gets much bigger with an erection. And the guy whose penis looks tiny might get a surprisingly big erection.

An analysis of more than a thousand measurements taken by sex researcher Alfred Kinsey shows that shorter flaccid penises tend to gain about twice as much length as longer flaccid penises.

3. The Pleasure Zone

Many men consider the underside of the glans (head) of the penis and the underside of the shaft to be most sensitive to sexual pleasure.

Researchers asked 81 healthy men to rate the erotic sensitivity of different areas of their bodies, including not only the penis but also zones such as the scrotum, anus, nipples, and neck.

4. Sensitivity Declines With Age

Studies show that the penis steadily loses sensitivity as men age though it’s hard to say exactly by how much. That’s because different researchers have used different ways to stimulate the penis and measure sensitivity.

In general, the sensitivity of the penis is gauged by the least amount of stimulation a man is able to feel. That is called the “sensory threshold.”

5. Vibrators Work on the Penis Too

Vibrators aren’t only for women. They work on the penis, too. In fact, vibration is so effective on the penis that often men with spinal cord injuries can ejaculate with the aid of a special medical vibrator. For this kind of treatment, the vibrator is usually held against the underside of the head of the penis.

“Medical-grade vibrators aren’t necessarily more powerful,” Kohler says. The vibrators are tuned to stimulate parts of the nervous system involved in ejaculation. “They work at frequencies or amplitudes that are more specific to the [nerve] pathways.”

6. There’s More to the Penis Than Meets the Eye

“Most guys would be proud to know that their penis is twice as long as they think it is,” Kohler says.

That’s because half the length of the penis is inside your body. Just like you don’t see all of a big oak tree above ground, you don’t see the root of your penis tucked up inside your pelvis and attached to your pubic bone.

7. Your Penis Is a Habitat

The skin of your penis is home to a diverse community of bacteria.

Lance Price, PhD, and Cindy Liu, PhD, researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute, in Flagstaff, Ariz., used genetic tests to identify the bacteria found on men’s penises. Their study showed there were a total of 42 unique kinds of bacteria inhabiting the skin of the penis.

8. Most Men Aren’t Circumcised

Worldwide, approximately 30% of males aged 15 and older are circumcised, according to a 2007 report from the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS.

Rates vary greatly depending upon religion and nationality, the report states. Almost all Jewish and Muslim males in the world have circumcised penises, and together they account for almost 70% of all circumcised males globally.

All these women were once men, and you can see the images before and after the gender change. It is really unbelievable. Some of these ladies look very beautiful and feminine, but some of them still have some male features.

A friend of mine, a guy who used to occasionally step out on his woman and hook up with other girls, had the strangest theory about the female species. “Women don’t cheat,” he told me, when I asked if he was ever worried she was doing the same thing to him. “It’s just not in their nature.” I just laughed.

Of course, I was not at all surprised when he found out she’d been two-timing him for most of their relationship after their inevitable breakup, but he was completely shocked. There are of course many things that men don’t know about women, mainly because we don’t want them to know, and so we try and keep them hidden really well. But during my two and a half years of interviewing countless ladies for Maxim’s sex section, I discovered that there are many, many more things that we ladies keep hidden from men…

1. As soon as we are alone in the house—husband leaves for the office, kids go to school, roommate goes out of
town—and we have quality free time knowing no one is going to walk in on us, we masturbate. Sometimes we even just do it if you’re still in the house if that quality free time is never going to come. Usually, it’s while we’re in the bathroom.
2. A good majority of us prefer to pee outside. And in the shower. And sometimes we really just want to do it in the hot tub, but we try to not do that one out of respect for everyone else in there.
3. We pluck stray hairs from our toes, our chin, our lips, moles on the backs of our legs and our nipples. And we really, really enjoy plucking a stubborn ingrown hair. Getting that sucker out is, for some gross reason, such sweet satisfaction.
4. When we’re in love, we smell your clothes or the pillow you were sleeping on when you’re not around. If you were to catch us doing this, we’d be mortified.
5. We’ve all wished that we could be more open and casual about sex from time to time … maybe go to a swingers party, have a threesome or be a dirty stripper for a night, but with no emotional consequences.
6. Deep down we really hope that your guy friends secretly want to sleep with us, and very often we will dress for them and subtly flirt just so they will. We don’t want to bone them; we just want them to want us.
7. We are not insulted in the slightest by those catcalls from construction workers, as long as they aren’t rude or nasty. It’s kind of flattering. We also like it when you get a little jealous, to a degree. Not in an irrational or psycho way, just a bit to show you’re protective and you care.
8. We regularly check in on what our exes are up to via Facebook, emails or texts. As long as we have the technology, they will never be fully out of our lives or minds. This doesn’t mean we still love them; we’re just curious.
9. When we have girls’ nights, we do bad things that you wouldn’t approve of like spill all of your embarrassing secrets, sneak cigarettes or other substances, and drink way more than we let on. Grinding with strangers at a club can also sometimes occur.
10. When you’re not around, we fart. The longer, the louder and the stinkier, the more enjoyable.

11. If you’re really hot or the sex is good, you can be a total idiot and we’ll still date you for a while. But we’ll never marry you. Brains and kindness will always trump sexiness when it comes to marriage material.
12. A lot of times we really like to have sex on the first date to determine whether the chemistry is there and we should have another date. Or sometimes we’re just plain horny and want to get laid. We hate being judged for it.
13. We hate waxing our privates. Hate it, hate it, hate it. But, we like that when it’s cleaned up you go down on us more readily. In a perfect world, you would go down on us with regularity on naturally poofy pubes.
14. When a guy says he doesn’t want kids, it’s really a dealbreaker for almost every woman who is still of child-bearing years.
15. The majority of us don’t really care about how much money you have or make as long as you are kind and emotionally generous and work hard. Laziness and lack of motivation is inherently unsexy.
16. A lot of us are fakers … when it comes to our love of sports and being outdoorsy.
17. We love flaws on guys. A little belly, gray hairs, even a receding hairline. It reminds us that we all have body issues and that we shouldn’t be so insecure or hard on ourselves. Being human is cool. But being whiny about your paunch or constantly fussing over your gray temples is as annoying as us always asking, “Does this make me look fat?”
18. During sex, we’re usually thinking about something other than you. A gross and pervy situation, another man, being dominated… who knows, but we always, always fantasize. It doesn’t mean we’re not sexually attracted to you, we just need the weird mental images to get us off.
19. We don’t consider drunk kissing cheating, as long as we’re the ones doing the drunk kissing. We consider sex with another man cheating.
20. We cherish our independence and “me” time more than you’ll ever know. We say we miss you, but are often secretly glad you’re gone so we can just totally relax and be ourselves. But we still love it when you come back.